Alchemy is a fast, private web browser for Windows with ad blocking built in, workspaces, messengers in the sidebar, and video tools that keep a video on top of your games. It is free, has no accounts and sends no telemetry. Alchemy started from a simple complaint: Opera has the best ideas in browsing, the sidebar messengers, workspaces and video pop out, but it feels slow and uses a lot of memory. Brave gets privacy right but never felt like home. Alchemy takes the workflow of the first and the privacy of the second, and puts both in one browser that stays light. It was first released as Ovyra and renamed to Alchemy in version 0.1.5. Settings, tabs and logins carried over with the rename.
WHAT IT DOES#
Ad blocking without an extension. Alchemy runs the same filter lists as uBlock Origin inside the browser itself, so ads, trackers, malware domains and cookie banners are blocked before they load. A shield in the address bar shows what was blocked on each page and turns protection off for a single site. It works on YouTube.
Video that follows you. Hovering any video shows a small toolbar with pop out, playback speed, Enhance for a crisper picture, and a screenshot button that saves the frame. Pop out opens Alchemy's own floating player, which keeps putting itself back on top so a video stays visible over borderless fullscreen games. Switching away from a playing tab pops its video out on its own. Each tab can also boost its volume up to 400 percent.
Workspaces and the sidebar. Tabs live in workspaces, each with its own color and icon, so games, work and everything else stay apart. WhatsApp, Discord, Telegram, Spotify and any other site can sit in the sidebar, logged in and one click away, and unload themselves when idle to save memory.
Tabs that explain themselves. Hovering a tab shows what it is and how much memory it uses. Tabs can be picked with Ctrl or Shift and dropped into colored groups, sleep when unused, and stay awake for sites like music players.
MAKING IT YOURS#
Nine themes with wallpapers, or your own image. Four color modes: Light, Alchemy navy, true black Dark, and System. Twenty accent colors that recolor the whole browser, the Alchemy logo included. Six interface fonts, 45 workspace icons, compact tabs and a choice of rounder or sharper corners.
The new tab page holds a clock, a search box and the Home zone, a set of shortcut tiles that glow in each site's own colors.
FOR POWER USERS#
Search shortcuts: type yt and press Tab to search YouTube, with twelve real search engines built in and room for your own. A command palette on Ctrl+K, split view, a JSON viewer, a color picker and DevTools docked in the window.
Heavy Mode gives Alchemy your whole PC, so tabs never sleep or slow down. In the other direction, a RAM limit and a network limiter keep it from taking memory or bandwidth that a game needs.
Chrome extensions install straight from the Chrome Web Store. Bookmarks, history and Opera's speed dial can be imported from Opera, Brave, Chrome or Edge.
PRIVACY#
Alchemy has no accounts, no analytics and no telemetry, and nothing in it reports back. Everything stays on your computer. Third party cookies, fingerprinting and trackers are blocked, connections are upgraded to HTTPS, DNS goes over HTTPS where supported, Global Privacy Control is sent to every site, and WebRTC cannot leak local IP addresses.
Masked Mode, opened with Ctrl+Shift+N, keeps everything in memory and forgets it when the last Masked Mode window closes.
HOW IT IS BUILT#
Alchemy is built on Chromium through Electron, so sites work exactly as they do in Chrome. The interface is written in React and TypeScript. Updates download in the background from GitHub and install on the next restart.
The source is public on GitHub under the GNU General Public License v3.0. Anyone can use, study, change and share it, as long as changed versions stay open under the same license and keep the credits.